After hack, some ignition interlock users couldn’t start their own cars

If you don't calibrate your interlock in time, your vehicle is dead.

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[jock2nerd]

It's not just about moving near transit if that is even possible, it's whether the transit serves the places people need to go. Often the answer is no in the US.

If we want people who have a history of drunk driving and might sell be alcoholic to be able to operate in society -- have a job, pay rent, buy groceries we need a system that makes that possible. Otherwise we are better off incarcerating them where the state takes care of their needs (at an extremely high cost).

Instead of actually building a system that works, we just put the burden on their friends and family who did nothing wrong but be related to an alcoholic and not want them to be homeless.

For what it's worth, all of this applies to people who can't drive for other reasons -- medical or financial. Most Americans live in a society that had decided those people are unimportant. I think that's bad and we should fix it, and as a side effect that will make reducing all traffic deaths and drunk driving deaths much easier.

And keep in mind that the limits for DUI are generally well below that of being actually drunk.

The punishment for being just over the limit should be substantially less that for someone who is actually drunk or enough above the limit that they are substantially impaired.

I worked, several decades ago, with an alcoholic with several DUIs, and he should never have been allowed to drive, but received a work-related exception, which he inevitably abused, because he was an alcoholic.

 

[iim]

Years ago, I used to work at a brokerage firm. And for about a year or so, I was commuting with a young coworker since we lived within a few miles of each other, plus we can ride in the carpool lane.

So our arrangement was, I would drive one week and she would drive the next week in her car, so we would take turns every other week. So I was a little surprised when she pulled up with one of these things hooked into the car. She had to excuse herself every 10 minutes or so it seemed to blow in this thing while she was driving.

It made for an interesting commute.

 

[dwl-sdca]

There at least one place in the USA where driving under the influence of ethanol has been acceptable behavior for decades. I’m 74 years old. I grew up in southern Louisiana. Alcohol drinking is a key part of the culture. Drive-in bars are common. I don’t mean drive-in restaurants that serve alcoholic beverages; there are bars that don’t serve food but have drive-by windows like McDonalds. There are drive-in frozen daiquiri shops where the most common drinks are made with 151 rum. The law allows this because the go-cup lid isn’t pierced by the server but by the customer.

Junior high school parties commonly saw parents serving beer and 3.2 beer was uncommon. Athletic booster clubs served not only beer but straight or stiff liquor containing mixed drinks. During high school beer drinking in cars in the parking lot during lunch was common.

The last time I visited my home town I saw a police officer on patrol drinking from a Michelob Ultra tall-boy (16 oz., I think). Police drinking beer while on-duty was a normal sight in my youth.

Arrests for drunken driving were rare. Legal penalties for injuries due to drunk driving were mild at best. Law suits where successful claims were paid were uncommon because both drivers had been drinking.

My parents didn’t drink. My aunts’ and uncles’ families did. As a kid, I was teased for not drinking but I didn’t because of the severity of punishment I knew I’d receive from my parents if I was perceived as being intoxicated. My first alcohol was in 1968 when I visited my older brother in New Orleans after my high school senior year. He, that evening, got into a minor ‘fender bender’ crash and neither he nor the other driver wanted to report it.

From my college years forward there was always one in the group who consumed -no- alcohol and was the designated driver. We usually drew lots to determine the sober one. Sometimes we would take a cab both there and home — particularly so when my girlfriend and I went to a nightclub to hear or dance to a particular band especially Doug Kershaw or Clifton Chenier.

 

[dwl-sdca]

And keep in mind that the limits for DUI are generally well below that of being actually drunk.

The punishment for being just over the limit should be substantially less that for someone who is actually drunk or enough above the limit that they are substantially impaired.

I worked, several decades ago, with an alcoholic with several DUIs, and he should never have been allowed to drive, but received a work-related exception, which he inevitably abused, because he was an alcoholic.

And keep in mind that the limits for DUI are generally well below that of being actually drunk.

I’m not sure of your definition of “being actually drunk”. In the U.S. now for most places the limit for adults is 0.08% When I was young (see my comment above) the standard was 0.1% but no action was taken below 0.15%. The limits now are 0.04% for truck and commercial licenses and below 0.02 for drivers under 21 years (many places require zero alcohol).

Many countries have a 0.05% limit for adults. Human factors and ergonomics studies have well documented substantial degradation of reaction time, lane keeping, speed assessment, and other skills and abilities at that 0.05% level. At least one U.S. state, Utah, has that 0.05% threshold but it might be argued that is more based on religion than physical factors. Yes, some people can have greater tolerance for blood alcohol content. Those people are exceptions to the norm. We don’t typically set a safety standard based on “maybe some people are tough enough to be able to drive competently at a higher BAC”.

Edit: Few would argue to set employee fall safety standards based on the balance skills of tightrope performers such as Nik Wallenda or Philippe Petit.

 

[Nogami]

A year without a license in the US is basically condemning that person to homelessness.

Again, what's the problem? Make your choice, enjoy your consequences.

It seems appropriate for knowingly putting yourself in a state that is likely to kill or injure others.

 

[iim]

I always find American culture around drunk driving amazing, because on one hand, it's pushed HARD that, if you're not drinking, you're not enjoying yourself. On the other hand, Americans LOVE punishment. If we add an alien third hand in here, American car culture is insane, you NEED a car, because public transport in America is shit.

You put those three things together, and you have a LOT of people that aren't the best at planning ahead getting shafted by societal programming. Sure, they're doing it to themselves, but they have a firm hand pushing them in that direction, you know?

Drinking laws are set by the states and enforcement is handled at the local level (city/county).

The rules on drinking and driving in the states did not start out so strict.

What you are passing judgment on is the end result of a long and informed process.

Also I would encourage you to do a Google search on USA vs world BAC drink driving limits.

The results may surprise you. Europe In general Is even more strict than the states are in terms of enforcement. The 0.08% BAC limit, which is what most US states follow is higher than what is allowed in most of Europe.

From Google:

Key Comparisons with American Drink-Drive Rules

• BAC Limits: The US standard of 0.08% is lenient compared to over 100 countries that have adopted 0.05% or lower, including most European nations.
• Zero Tolerance: Countries like Brazil, Russia, Czech Republic, and Saudi Arabia have zero-tolerance laws, treating any measurable alcohol as a violation.
• Regional Variation: Similar to how U.S. states differ in penalties, Australia publishes offender names, while Norway mandates jail time and hard labor.
• Stricter Standards: Many countries, including many in Europe, enforce lower limits for young, novice (0.00%–0.02%), or commercial drivers.

 

[norton_I]

Again, what's the problem? Make your choice, enjoy your consequences.

It seems appropriate for knowingly putting yourself in a state that is likely to kill or injure others.

Ok, but your attitude is going to end up with more people dead not less. if you want to satisfy your bloodlust that's an opinion, but it has nothing to do with public safety.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

There at least one place in the USA where driving under the influence of ethanol has been acceptable behavior for decades.<snip>

Arrests for drunken driving were rare. Legal penalties for injuries due to drunk driving were mild at best. Law suits where successful claims were paid were uncommon because both drivers had been drinking.

How did the insurance company handle this? Id imagine they would not honor the local "everyone does it so what" rules. Do people just not even try to make insurance claims in such cases?

 

[dwl-sdca]

How did the insurance company handle this? Id imagine they would not honor the local "everyone does it so what" rules. Do people just not even try to make insurance claims in such cases?

I haven’t lived in Louisiana for over 25 years. When I was there auto insurance cost was very high. You are correct that essentially all non-injury crashes were not reported to police or insurance companies. Before I moved to California from Louisiana, I had no at-fault crashes and zero speeding citations my cost for equivalent coverage was lower than most people I knew. Nonetheless upon moving to California my same company insurance cost declined to about half the Louisiana rate even with far better coverage.

 

[ReclaimerLeviathan]

You know what’s 1000x worse?

Drinking and driving.

For me, this is one those punishments that fits the crime perfectly.

Not even a "punishment" - a necessary restriction that happens to be inconvenient. If it were perfectly automated and convenient (say, something you injected into your body and it just monitored your blood-alcohol all the time), they wouldn't actively distribute the worse option just because it's suffering. Pretty sure law enforcement/DMVs don't care about the convenience level, but, rather, the end result of locking out drinking drivers.

 

[Quiet Entropy]

The entire system sounds so convoluted and expensive. If someone can't be trusted to drive sober, take away that person's license and auction the car. Much simpler.

If one is resident in fly-over country, public transit may consist of one's own feet. I don't like drunk drivers but this renting of an interlock system is slightly less onerous then ...never mind.

Edit: Intoxalock owned by a private equity firm. No wonder.

I'd rather they didn't drive but people gotta work.

 

[danlock]

...be like - I can do this in less then X time I'll just have my buddy blow into it for me.

then what?

 

[Sarty]

I expect a lot of downvotes on this. But, I post this as a data point. Sometimes, physical actions are caused by mental problems.

At 49, my wife had a heart attack and died. I went to work, and never saw her alive again. So much for the life we planned and were building. I mentally crashed hard. HARD. 2 weeks after she passed, I got a DUI. I wasn't a drinker much before. And, havent had a drink since the DUI. Should I have been drinking? Definetely not. Was I a rational, thinking adult? Nope, not in the slightest.

Not everything is black and white.

-- edit. change probably -> definetely

Thank you for sharing this, and my condolences for your loss.

I don't think the world would have been made a better or safer or more just place if we had withheld from you the opportunity to be a full, productive member of society for the rest of your life, as some have proposed in this comment section.

 

[OrvGull]

And keep in mind that the limits for DUI are generally well below that of being actually drunk.

Not in the US. There was an episode of Mythbusters where they drove on a closed course while very close to the 0.08% US limit. (Going over it would have been illegal.) They were notably impaired. People are notoriously bad at judging how impaired they actually are.

 

[mgforbes]

There at least one place in the USA where driving under the influence of ethanol has been acceptable behavior for decades.

I was struck by the change in attitude towards drinking and driving, watching "The Birds", Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece. There was a scene in which a drunk is having "one more for the road" and is escorted by the police. These days, that would be an automatic arrest. Even the phrase "one more for the road" seems completely foreign to me in modern culture.

And yes, yet another "lost a relative to a multiply-convicted drunk driver" forum commenter. A long time ago.

 

[mekantti]

Ninja'ed
No sympathy. These folks are convicted of DUI. They should be freaking inconvenienced. Perhaps they will think next time.

In the end, DUI convictions are a pretty limited market for those sweet, overpriced leases. You know the companies making the profits are using some of that money to lobby hard to mandate tech like that to non-DUI use cases for people matching an AI generated risk profile or something.

And that's how the shittiness expands - the indefensibles are just the guinea pigs.

 

[Halloween Jack]

So, I've skimmed through most of these comments, and so far I've seen one person who had to use one of these devices. I thought that I'd add my experiences to hopefully shed a little light on the subject. This is, of course, just my experience, although occasionally I'll mention something from the AA Big Book. Yes, I go to AA meetings, no, I'm not trying to proselytize. Honest.

• One of the things that you'll occasionally see mentioned in addiction recovery programs is that addiction is the only type of disease that convinces you that you don't have it. That was certainly the case for me. After my first DUI (at which point in time my state didn't require a BAIID--blood-alcohol ignition interlock device--on the car, at least for first time offenders), I was sober for about 2 1/2 years, but wasn't in AA or any other kind of recovery program. I convinced myself that I had simply been under a lot of stress at the time; recently divorced, money problems leading to a bankruptcy, bad boss, etc. (Left unexamined by me, at least at the time, was the question of how many of those things--including the bad boss, since it was the only place I could get a job--were caused or at least exacerbated by the drinking.) So, "don't drink and drive" is kind of a useless suggestion, since almost everybody drinks and drives, in the sense that they drive after they've had drinks--not nearly as many drinks as I did, or not nearly as soon after drinking, of course. Denial is, as they say, not just a river in Egypt.
• After my second DUI, I had to get a BAAID on my car, just to be able to drive it for the few months before my driving privileges were revoked entirely. In my state, and maybe in most, you can actually choose your BAIID provider, and I went with the cheapest one on the list, which was a mistake. The company that installed the device and monitored compliance had as its main business the sale and installation of chrome hubcap spinners. They apparently didn't know how to properly calibrate the devices, since I got a number of false positives during those five months, and every time I had to write a letter to the state explaining why. I was not threatened with arrest or revocation of my driving privileges because, in each case, I could point out that I immediately retested and passed. Still a pain in the ass, though. Nevertheless, it did have one positive aspect--the last drink that I took was the night before I had the device installed. They told me how many hours I'd have to wait to pass the test after drinking, and by that time, as we also say in the program, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.
• Then I couldn't drive at all because I pled guilty to the DUI, and it was a year and a half before I could drive again, and then I was on a restricted permit--I could only drive to go to medical appointments (and get prescriptions refilled), to go to AA meetings, and to have the data from the device downloaded. This time I went to a slightly pricier outfit (they did fancy custom car stereo setups) and didn't have any false positives. There were other requirements for my probation--fines, of course, a bit of work release time, mandatory drug and alcohol counseling--and by the time I could drive again, I was a regular at AA meetings, even though I was no longer required to go to them. I know that there are a lot of people who think that AA is a cult; I suspect that the ones who really hate it are people who were forced to attend meetings after a DUI. AA itself is pretty clear that it's a program of last resort, not a program of first resort; the "How It Works" section of the Big Book, which contains the twelve steps, says outright that "half measures availed us nothing" and "we thought we could find an easier, softer way, but we could not." One of the other aspects of my guilty plea was that I had to report regularly on the fulfillment of the terms of my probation, not to a probation officer in an office somewhere, but to a judge in traffic court, and I usually had to wait a few hours before I could talk to the judge. It occurred to me later that that was probably so that I could see the people who were coming back for multiple DUIs, some wearing the prison jumpsuits, and think about that.
• I eventually got my full driving privileges back. This required jumping through a number of hoops with the state, including some steps that were completely redundant. There basically is no service with a smile for DUI convictees working their way through the bureaucracy. And I can completely believe that, at least some of the time in some of the states, and maybe most of the time in most states, programs like these benefit the vendors more than the drunk drivers. But here's the thing: that's what it took for me. I haven't had a drink in fourteen years and I don't miss it; I do a lot more with my life sober than I did as a drunk because I was either drunk or hung over, much of the time, and the interval between recovering from my daily hangover and starting drinking kept getting shorter and shorter. I'd already tried AA after my first DUI and rejected it, and my finally taking it seriously was why I didn't end up killing myself and/or someone else. (On the negative side, the coffee usually sucks, so I bring my own. Starbucks is still cheaper than booze, though.)

 

[Hmnhntr]

Again, what's the problem? Make your choice, enjoy your consequences.

It seems appropriate for knowingly putting yourself in a state that is likely to kill or injure others.

Yeah, I'm not really for destroying people's lives, even as a punishment for destroying other people's lives. Harm prevention should be the goal, not cruelty. What you're describing is revenge, not justice.

 

[Hmnhntr]

Ok, but your attitude is going to end up with more people dead not less. if you want to satisfy your bloodlust that's an opinion, but it has nothing to do with public safety.

Lots of people want revenge rather than justice.

 

[spasm]

The problem we have in the US is large parts of it are completely designed around driving. It can be hard to be a functional member of society without driving. Public transit is often poor, especially when you weren't planning around using it. You may have limited or no options for food or other basic necessities that are accessible without a car. If you can't get to work without driving taking away someone's car and license to drive is defacto termination at their job. We absolutely do not want to support them continuing to drink and drive but we also can't nuke their entire live any more than a drunk driving conviction already will. We don't need a bunch of jobless pissed off alcoholics who have nothing left to loose. That wouldn't be good for society either.

In Australia courts routinely take away your driver's license for DUI with a limited exception where you're allowed to drive to work and back (so the punishment doesn't become 'and we take away your job'). So you can only legally be on the road during very specific timeframes in very specific areas. Breach that though and you go directly to jail and lose your license period.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

Yeah, I'm not really for destroying people's lives, even as a punishment for destroying other people's lives. Harm prevention should be the goal, not cruelty.

Which is why we have these devices in the first place. It used to be that it was an automatic no more driving for you. (on 2nd offense iirc)